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Yuri Markovich Butsko

Born in the city of Lubny in the Poltava region to a military family. After the war, the family moved to Moscow, where he entered a music school, and then the history department of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, which he left after two courses to continue his music studies. After graduating from the choral department of the October Revolution Music College , he entered the theoretical and composition department of the Moscow Conservatory in the composition class of S. A. Balasanyan . He graduated from the conservatory in 1966 , then postgraduate studies and in 1968 began teaching score reading and instrumentation (he finished teaching with the rank of professor in 2013)

Butsko's first works that gained considerable fame appeared during his conservatory years. They are associated with the continuation of the traditions of Russian classical music, especially M.P. Mussorgsky: the monoopera "Notes of a Madman" based on N.V. Gogol, the chamber opera "White Nights" based on F.M. Dostoevsky. A number of works from the 1960s and 1970s are associated with the so-called "new folk wave" in Russian music of that period: the cantatas "Evening", "Wedding Songs", the oratorio "The Tale of the Pugachev Rebellion" (not performed).

Both of these trends are preserved when Butsko concentrates on developing a special harmonic and polyphonic system based on the laws of Old Russian monodic (single-voice) church chants (the foundation is a 12-step diatonic scale - "everyday mode", in which the supporting tones, spaced a fourth apart, together make up "twelve-sound at a distance"). The largest work of this style is "Polyphonic Concerto. Nineteen counterpoints for four keyboard instruments, choir and percussion instruments on themes of Russian znamenny chant" (about 3 and a half hours of sound). Then the elements of the created system enter as an organic part into the musical language of the composer, and Old Russian themes are freely developed in his works.

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In recent decades, Butsko has given preference to large instrumental forms: 7 "large" symphonies, genre symphony suites based on folklore material, chamber symphonies, concerts for solo instruments with orchestra, chamber-instrumental cycles. Of the vocal-symphonic works of these years, the most significant are the oratorio "Song-Book" to the verses of Nikolai Klyuev and the Canon to the Angel of the Terrible (based on the texts of Ivan the Terrible) for soloists, choir and instrumental ensemble.

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In various works by Butsko, famous themes are encountered repeatedly, especially often as a “summary,” “conclusion,” mainly in the finales of large cyclic forms, although not only in them. In such cases — that is, in combination with a theme or with text in vocal-instrumental works — the author’s “system” can be easily perceived by ear. In other situations, its influence is less obvious, but it is undoubtedly constantly present in the composer’s harmonic language, in the principles of constructing the form, in the general profile of his works.

It is noteworthy that Butsko, who knows the modern church singing routine and is well acquainted with the ancient tradition, does not resort directly to church singing forms in his work, that is, he does not compose musical cycles of the liturgy, all-night vigil, etc. The obstacles that arise when combining modern artistic consciousness with the requirements of the church canon are obvious to him, and therefore, one way or another entering the field of church tradition, he does not encroach on the "liturgical nature" of his compositions and in every way avoids the "decorative" stylization of church intonation. It can be said that znamenny chant is perceived by him primarily as a kind of perfect multifaceted crystal, the light on which can fall from one side or another, with varying degrees of brightness, of one color or another, but will never exhaust everything that is hidden in this crystal.

That is why the composer always emphasized that the "znamenny mode" of the Polyphonic Concerto is in no way a "universal", "total" system, like dodecaphony, serial technique, etc. Butsko's "system" is inextricably linked both with the world from which it grew and with the composer's personality. Attempts to apply the proposed modal or constructive principles selectively, as "techniques", cannot lead to any valuable result (and such attempts were made).

To this day, a number of the composer’s works, including large-scale ones, remain unperformed and unpublished.

From the second half of the 1960s to the mid-1980s, Butsko worked extensively in theater and cinema, in particular, at the Taganka Theater (music for the plays Pugachev, Mother, Hamlet, etc.), at the Mossovet Theater (Petersburg Dreams, The Brothers Karamazov, etc.), at the Mosfilm studio (the 13-part film The Road to Calvary based on the novel by A.K. Tolstoy, music for the restoration of the film The Young Lady and the Hooligan with the participation of Vladimir Mayakovsky, etc.).

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The design of the site uses the works of the Honored Artist of Russia Viktor Kalinin, as well as the composer's autographs.

2021-2024. Yuriy Butsko Foundation.

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